Between Methaqualone and Quaalude
During seventies, Quaalude at first was widely used as sleeping pill for insomnia therapy caused by the sedative effects this drug contributed. Too bad Quaalude was then mistreated.
Quaalude was popular among teenagers and labeled as ‘recreational drug’. Quaalude was known as able to increase euphoria, and Quaalude in that time was used commonly during sexual activity.
As the drug abuse reached its peak, it was connected to overdoses, which urged to suicide attempts, injuries, and car accidents. Respiratory arrest, delirium, kidney or liver damage, coma, and death were the other diseases that may appeared .
Methaqualone is the prominent chemical which was needed to make Quaalude. Methaqualone was first developed in India in the 1950s as an anti-malarial drug. By the mid-60s, U.S. doctors began prescribing Quaalude as a non-addictive alternative to barbiturates.
In South Africa, Methaqualone is commonly known as Mandrax, M-pills or buttons, it is not taken orally but is crushed and mixed in a pipe (or in the neck of a broken bottle) with marijuana.
Methaqualone is one of the most commonly used hard drugs in South Africa. The low price (South African Rand R30.00 average, which is about USD $3.02 or EUR €2.34 (as of March 13 2009) of methaqualone together with the ready availability of cheap, low-grade marijuana make it (in addition to Methamphetamine and temazepam) the preferred hard drug of the low-income section of South African society.
Methaqualone is no longer legally produced, so Methaqualone for the South African market is manufactured either in India or in South Africa itself — or in other African countries.
Separately, doctors had already started turning to other alternatives to treat insomnia because the sleeping pill carried the stigma of an abused drug – later on called methamphetamine. Methamphetamine can only be made by a few large manufacturers.
Unfortunately Methamphetamine abused started appearing on the West Coast in the mid-80s. DEA were confident that with a new chemical control law for methamphetamine’s key ingredients, ephedrine or pseudoephedrine, methamphetamine too would be beaten. But they were wrong.
(synthesized from wikipedia and pbs.org)
